Scott T. Ralston

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The Corn Ethanol Bandwagon and Alternative Fuels:

We are all aware of the many issues surrounding petroleum. There is the high cost, dependence on foreign sources, green house gasses and global warming and the list goes on. Recently there has been much interest in ethanol because it is looked at as “Green” energy. HOWEVER, hold on before you jump on the bandwagon! Ethanol can be good but you have to be more aware of what is going on behind the scenes instead of just at the pump. As a wildlife professional I deal with many of these issues every day from the ground up.

The main source of ethanol and the bandwagon that everyone has hopped on is production from corn. Corn based ethanol, in my opinion, is one of the worst solutions to the problem of alternative fuels. First it is a very inefficient process. There are a lot of different figures to estimate efficiency but one study from a credited university states that the production of ethanol from corn is approximately 2% efficient from the ground to the pump. That is, it takes 100 gallons of fuel (or equivalent energy) to produce 102 gallons of ethanol for a net gain of 2 gallons. In the end we are burning much more energy to get a green sources than we would have if we would have just used traditional fossil fuels. The only reason it appears to be cheaper at the pump is through government subsidies. Ethanol is also less efficient in your engine. Exact mileage change will vary from vehicle to vehicle but anyone who has run E85 in their car will tell you their mileage went down. I even notice a little difference running 10% ethanol vs standard. Personnel I wouldn’t mind the decrease in mileage if I knew it was better for the environment but the inefficient production doesn’t help.

I live in a rural area of North Dakota and have noticed more corn planted this year than ever before. The increased acres of corn means fewer acres available for other crops thus the laws of supply and demand take hold and the price of all other crops and their resulting products goes up. This includes the cost of barley for you beer drinkers! Even the other uses for corn such as feed for livestock have to compete against ethanol so the price of beef and dairy increases. The increased cost of crops doesn’t bother me that much because farmers are underpaid anyway. That is a whole other soapbox (our agriculture program is 100% dependant on government subsides to keep the system afloat).

The biggest issue I have with corn ethanol is breaking new land to plant in corn. Since the amount of land available to a landowner is limited, they are now breaking up idle land or even native prairie to plant into corn. This is wildlife habitat. Once native prairie is broken it can never be replaced! It can be replanted to grass but will never be the same quality as it once was and is prone to many more weed problems.

So if corn ethanol isn’t the answer for alternative energy than what is. There are many solution that are much more “green” such as solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, etc. However, these solutions require a different set of technology and can’t fix the need for the millions of gas powered cars & trucks on the road today. We can’t expect everyone to turn in their gas car and buy a hydrogen car. Eventually we will be there but changes like that in the market will take decades to transition. I believe ethanol is a solution but needs to be produced from a different source.

Cellulosic ethanol is a great solution for the future. In corn based ethanol the corn kernels are fermented creating alcohol but the rest of the plant is wasted. Cellulosic ethanol is produced by breading down lignocellulose, which is the main component of almost every plant cell from all types of plants. Because of this you can throw a very wide variety of plant material into a Cellulosic ethanol process and get gas out of it with very little waste. You could mow your lawn and instead of hauling the clippings to the land fill you could drop them off at the ethanol plant and produce gas to run your lawn mower again. On a large scale using commercial crops you could harvest the small grains as you normally would but bail up the stubble left behind (such as corn stalks) and turn it into ethanol. An even more exciting use is grasslands for ethanol. Instead of planting crops year after year and conducting all the field prep and plowing or any other inputs into a crop you could plant a diverse stand of native grass or use existing grasslands. You plant it once then harvest it once per year and take the biomass to the ethanol plant. Very little energy goes into maintenance or harvest. The grassland also provides habitat for wildlife, prevents erosion of bare soil in crop fields, sequesters carbon (plants take CO2 out of the air and into plant material which eventually ends up stored in the ground) thereby reducing CO2 in the atmosphere which is a greenhouse gas. The input is minimal so the cost of production should go down and should be reflected at the pump.

If this is all so great why are we planting more corn this year? It is because we are sheep AKA bandwagon theory. The Cellulosic technology is new and there are a few pilot plants. The corn ethanol fermentation has been around much longer and is well understood so that was the easiest thing to implement when the alternative energy need hit main stream. It is not the best solution but to the general public it looked good and could be implemented quickly so it “appeared” like the administration was doing something right. It is like a fresh coat of green pain on rotten wood siding.

If we max out all the corn acres and yield increases we can and put it all into corn ethanol production we won’t come close to supplementing even 25% of this countries need for petroleum. However, we have more than enough biomass potential from grasslands, forestry scraps and waste, urban and industrial waste and any other organic materials to make us 100% free from any foreign oil through the use of cellulosic ethanol production or gasification. For more information than my own opinions and experience do the research for yourself. Look up alternative energies such as cellulosic ethanol and gasification.

The best clean energy sources I see in the future are straight electricity which can be produced by any number of clean sources, even some we haven’t though of yet, and hydrogen. Hydrogen is very easy to produce; in fact most people have done it in a high school chemistry class. Run and electric current through water and on the negative charged end hydrogen is released and on the positive charged end oxygen is released, both of which can be captured and stored (electrolysis). Hydrogen is not as dangerous as it used to be by storing it in fuel cells which can be incorporated into your car like a gas tank is now. When you burn hydrogen it once again combines with oxygen and produces water. Simply put you just ran an engine on water with no harmful pollution or greenhouse gas emissions. This technology already exists and is being implemented on a smaller scale. In Norway they are placing hydrogen refueling stations along one of their main highways for use by a fleet of hydrogen cars in the country (Hynor Project). These stations are self serve and look like a soda vending machine which produces hydrogen right there on sight using electrolysis.

Is there much the average person can do about these issues right now? No, probably not. However just be aware of the issues and spread the word about what is good and what is bad about alternative fuels. If enough people get the right idea then demand will drive the supply. Also having educated opinions will help when decision making comes around or proposals for policy changes are brought to the public.